Domain: rpi.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to rpi.edu.
Comments · 372
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Re:The Loebner Prize
Why has the AC been modded down? He explained (with direct quotes) what the Loebner Prize that the researchers are going for is.
Reading the description it sounds like it could be done with current methods and brute-force. In particular restricting the scope of the questions to avoid tripping up the AI removes a large chunk of the problem. It is only a small first step towards the real Turing Test.
For those who want to judge progress themselves, a much better link than the article is the researcher's page. It has videos of their system in action (or it did when I typed this, I suspect it may die shortly...)
What they've done is no more impressive than many current chatbots. The two main differences (that created this new story) are that they are doing it with avators (yay! newmedia-whores2.0), and that they're going to try it out on much bigger hardware than has been tried previously. But even the false beliefs demo is not that impressive if you strip off the Second Life frontend. It is only as complex as a typical demo in blocks world. -
Re:Oblig Star Trek
Quite possible.. they are working on something like this and have already developed a device called the "mini z". Terahertz can not only see through stuff, but somehow they can also do absorbtion spectroscopy on the reflected rays and tell what things are made of. Its really pretty amazing stuff. http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1944
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Re:So what if I wear metallic clothing ?
T-ray (Terahertz frequency) is at least desriptive, unlike X-ray (where X means unknown - it was named before scientists knew what it was), and it is used by scientists:
http://www.rpi.edu/terahertz/whats_new.html
If a girl wants to wear a metal mesh dress to the airport then:
1) hubba hubba
2) strip search time -
Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animalI'm not convinced there's any way to die gracefully when your business becomes outmoded (SCO, too).
There business was not "outmoded" overnight. I pirated my first mp3 as a freshman in high school in 1996. This was the first lawsuit, in 2003. Whether they were keen on mp3 trading during the 7 years between those two dates is beyond me... but certainly by 2003 they had figured out that *something* was going on.
Right now it is 5 years later. It has been about 4 years since I have pirated an mp3 (because I am unwilling to deal with the risk of being sued). Instead of competing for market share, they sue for profits. That isn't a sound business plan.
And you know what REALLY killed them? iTunes success. For $1 per song, Apple became a music vendor. For figure, right? That's *almost* as much as the industry was charging for CDs. The industry response? DRM. I guess they didn't think that through either.
So, what would be a more logical solution when some customers are lost due to your high costs, and other customers are lost due to the inconvenience of dealing with your shiny plastic discs?
I want them to die... so I won't answer that. But I am sure anybody reading this post could formulate a couple of progressive answers to the situation that the music industry is in.
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Re:What happens when...
Stopping cars with harpoons. Someone might have time to find a better link.....This is an old low tech idea. You ram the car with a harpoon which deploys tear gas into the cars interior! Sounds like a lot of fun?! Boy racers around here are building them and loading them with Nitrous Oxide. Its funny seeing some old Gifford trying to be angry and laughing his arse off at the same time.
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Fight the power, RPI!
Contrast this brave approach with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's decision to roll over and show its belly to the RIAA:
http://www.poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=5716&part=1 -
A chapel? Really?
Sorry guys, it's been done before. Didn't anyone here go to RPI?
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Re:OK, seriously.
Aw, come on, do you have a dog? If so, what did you name him (or her)? "Dog?"
I feel sorry for your kids.
"Hi there, little girl, what's your name?"
"Daughter."
If you owned an automobile company, we'd be driving Cars that come in imaginative models like the Red Car and the Gray Car.
Point is, hardly anything is simply given a descriptive name of what it is. It's boooring. These days in the age of "Cingular" and "Accenture", it's the rare exception that they are. Good or bad, it's the way it is.
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How about using that new non-reflecting material?
Researchers here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recently came up with a super non-reflective coating -- it basically has nano-spikes that help absorb light from all angles and at all frequencies. Seems like it would be good to use for the dark pixel. http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1956
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Re:Stupid
Heh. Reminds me of Dave Barry's Enron Q & A in plain English.
Q. Doesn't Enron have a board of directors whose members are responsible for overseeing the corporation?
A. Yes. They are paid $300,000 a year.
Q. So how could they have allowed this flagrant deception to go on?
A. They are paid $300,000 a year. -
Re:Nerd factor?
I wish I understand what it is that convinces US born women to not become programmers. I don't think it's a harassment issue. That's not something I've especially noticed. Though, since I'm a guy, it's possible it just passed me by.
I don't think that there is harassment, but I do think there are subtle factors that keep smart woman in other fields just because of the perception that they don't belong in computer science.
I attended an engineering school (RPI) and when I was selecting my major, my adviser told me that I should stick with biology instead of cs because "there is a lot less math involved". Since I didn't have any problem with math, his comment stunned me. Granted, I have never gotten good advice from any guidance counselor / adviser and maybe I am reading too much into it, but I can't imagine he would have said that that to a male student who had my grades.
Later, my mother said I should choose biology instead of cs because, "Computers are so lonely. You should do something more social." Again, I don't think a brother of mine would have ever heard that comment.
I ended up getting biochemistry degree with computer science minor, by the way.
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RPI's new Game major!
Begin shameless plug:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute just got their new Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program out the door--your son can get a four-year education in Game Design with one of five concentrations, or elect to take a dual-major or dual-degree with GSAS and a more traditional major like CS, Psychology, or something else.
I'm a freshman at RPI and I'm not planning on transferring into this program, but I am planning on taking a minor in Game Design Studies, which has been available for a couple of years now. I know some of the professors involved in making this program happen, and they've really been busting their asses to make the school faculty and the Regents of New York happy with it.
Read all about it here: http://www.gsas.rpi.edu/ -
Re:McMurdo Panorama
It is an amazing pic, but by being so realistic it just shows you why so many of those born after the excitement of the moon race years fail to be overwhelmed by space exploration. Because there's nothing there but a bunch of rocks. (Okay, and -- hot news -- some caves). Or as Dave Barry puts it so eloquently...
"Today we are pretty sure that nobody lives on Mars, at least not year-round. We base this on the fact that NASA has spent hundreds of millions of dollars sending unmanned probes up there, and they have sent back thousands of pictures, all of them showing: rocks.
As I write these words, we have yet another probe scooting around on Mars, and it has been sending back exquisitely detailed photographs of: rocks. At this point, I, for one, am willing to stipulate that Mars is, basically, covered with rocks, but our space scientists apparently do not intend to stop until they obtain photographs of every last one of them.
Which leads us to the president's plan for getting to Mars, which consists of four stages:
Stage One: We set up a base on the Moon (...)
Stage Four: They blast off again, and, after a difficult, tedious and extremely dangerous six-month space voyage, arrive--if all goes well--on Mars, where they find: rocks. So the benefits are obvious. "
http://www.poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=284 2&part=1 -
Why dupe?
Why did people think this is/was a dupe? It looks genuine, even though the URL didn't work for me. http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1956 worked for me, though, which I got from their main page.
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Let's give a cheer for old Rensselaer
E to the X dy/dx
E to the X dx
Cosine, secant tangent, sine
3.14159, square root, cube root, log of pi,
Dis-integrate th'em RPI!
http://cheerleaders.union.rpi.edu/squad.html
Let's give a cheer for Old Rensselaer,
You bring the whiskey, I'll bring the beer!
Send the freshmen out for gin,
And don't let a sober sophomore in!
We never stumble, we never fall,
We sober up on pure alcohol!
When we yell, we YELL LIKE HELL
For the glory of Rensselaer! -
Go RPI... I think.
Wow, my alma mater is actually on slashdot, doing something possibly useful. It is unfortunate, though, that while the school has been pushing big on research its undergraduate studies are still not improving (I still interact with undergraduatesfrom the school daily).
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Re:huh?
The physics constant c refers to the speed of light in a vacuum. Read here to find out why this statement isn't stupid.
mandelbr0t -
Re:Why a 10g link would average 7.5g
When you try and fill a 10g pipe with a single tcp session, the congestion avoidance mechanisms of tcp will prevent you from filling the pipe. Essentially the sender will ramp up the rate of packets very quickly initially until the receiver sends back a congestion notification. The sender will then cut the send rate *in half*, and climb it back up very slowly - 1 extra byte per round-trip if memory serves (don't quote me on that). This works great for 100m, but to climb from 5g to 10g takes about 30 minutes if you have a cross-US round-trip-time (RTT).
99% correct. It's one packet per ACK (or often, every two ACKs), rather than 1 byte. However, it still takes a long time to get back to 10g. Your description of the congestion control mechanism is otherwise correct.In case you were wondering, TCP Reno's expected bandwidth is inversely proportional to RTT. For more information, see the following paper: Modeling TCP Throughput: A Simple Model and its Empirical Validation (PDF).
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Gross overestimate?
I generally agree, but your numbers are multiplied by two - do you have quarters instead of semesters? Once divided, it would nearly match pretty much what I took at RPI to obtain my CS degree:
Computer Science 1 and 2 (C++)
Data Structures & Algorithms
Computer Organization - some assembly, caching, memory management, performance
Models of Computation - grammars, syntax, lex/flex & yacc/bison
Programming Languages - lambda calculus, functional programming, etc
Operating Systems - processes, threads, paging, windows vs linux
Software Design & Documentation - the class this whole post is about
Network Programming (CS elective)
Database Systems (CS elective)
Except for the last two, all are required - in addition, you must take 2 or 3 (I forget) 400-level CS electives - the ones I mentioned are popular choices.
In addition there were these math requirements:
Calculus 1 and 2
Discrete Structures (Discrete Mathematics)
1 Math elective (typically Diff Eq or Linear Algebra) -
At RPI: Software Design and Documentation
One such course that addresses at least part of the development cycle:
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~milanova/csci4440/ (Fall 2006)
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hollingd/sdd/ (Spring 2001)
Software Design and Documentation was a required course for a CS degree. -
At RPI: Software Design and Documentation
One such course that addresses at least part of the development cycle:
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~milanova/csci4440/ (Fall 2006)
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hollingd/sdd/ (Spring 2001)
Software Design and Documentation was a required course for a CS degree. -
An academic paper
Here is an interesting mathematical proof under a simple but reasonable model that shows uninformed voting hurts, not helps. The title of the paper is, "If you are not informed, don't vote".: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~magdon/ps/unpub/vote.pdf
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EVE cd-rom
Peter Gabriel is a real pioneer in thinking about how music, technology and communities come together. And this action is just the latest step in a long road. He realized early on the power that labels had over his music, so in the '80s and early 90's he bought back the rights to his catalog from the labels that had originally published it. (It is standard practice in contracts for the musician to sign over copyright to their songs to the label). Once those rights were secured he began to explore new ways of using his music. Two very early efforts were the Xplora and EVE cd-roms (see the site here
.
In the summer of 1994 I was hired by the Starwave Corporation in Seattle to be part of a small team developing EVE. The idea was pretty interesting -- pair the work of different contemporary visual artists up with songs from Gabriel, treating each as raw material, then create a framework in which people can explore, share and remix that material to create an integrated audio/video hybrid that is greater than the sum of its parts. I had just finished a graduate art program that had similar ideas, so I felt right at home.
We used the work of artists Helen Chadwick , Yayoi Kusama , Cathy de Monchaux , and Nils-Udo -- using high rez scans of their work as starting points. They were paired up with Gabriel's songs 'Come Talk To Me' , 'Shaking The Tree' , and 'In Your Eyes'. We had the equivalent of the sample packs that he has made available on-line for Shock the Monkey. These were professionally produced loops from the multi-track masters. Gabriel's recording process usually involves dozens and dozens of tracks, so these samples weren't mix-downs, but elements from a single track.
We created something called the Interactive Musical Xperience to bring these elements together. It was a kind of audio/video sampler that you could play with your keyboard, triggering sound and animation loops against a rendered landscape background. The software quantized everything so you would always be in time and you could work improvisationally or with a simple graphical timeline. The team developing it had a diverse background in software development, fine art and filmmaking. My job eventually became to create functional mockups of the interaction using Director 4....! The production team eventually relocated to the Real World studios in Box, UK which was an incredibly intense creative environment -- musicians, engineers, filmmakers, photographers, designers all working together in a bucolic 'campus' made from an old mill complex.
Although I eventually left Real World and Starwave to pursue my own artwork, it was a really great experience. The fact that the rest of the world has started to catch up to the ideas Peter Gabriel has been thinking about since the early 90's only reaffirms how resonant those ideas continue to be. -
Re:Too much work
You might be interested in reading the results of the RPI Lighting Research Center's study on "Full Spectrum" lighting, it's pretty interesting.
That being said, I think that most of your problems with CFL's probably have to do with low color rendering index - older/cheaper CFL's have pretty miserable CRIs (50-60s). (why colors look like crap)
You can commonly get good CFLs in the 80s, and like someone mentions later on in the thread, you can even get one with a CRI of 96 (the cheapest I've seen that bulb is $16/bulb), but over the lifetime of the bulb you should still save money (w/ at my current kWH rate you would save about $100/bulb in electricity over the bulb lifetime).
Those Lumiram Ecolumes, besides having a 96 CRI are at 5000K ("daylight") and put out a pretty impressive 1300 Lumens and might be worth giving a try. (they also claim to be "full spectrum," but from the charts of the studies, it looks like nothing, not your GE Reveals or Flourescent FSI puts out anything close to resembling D65).
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Solar cost analysis
Indeed, the current state of photovoltiac (PV) technology and economics make it hard to justify even solar-powered streetlights, let alone homes. In a recent analysis, the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute found that it is possible to use PV lighting -- if you're off the grid in a remote area, and fairly low light levels are acceptable (or desirable, to reduce light pollution, for example). But if you are anywhere near the grid, a PV parking lot fixture, for example, might never pay for itself, since maintenance costs may outstrip any energy cost savings.
Life cycle costs for this and several other possible PV lighting applications are detailed in the new report, Lighting Answers: Photovoltaic Lighting, available free at their web site: http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/publicationDetails.asp?id=1 271 -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
An RPI Student's View...
Some people may remember RPI for its consistent involvement in the RIAA college lawsuits.
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music, and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts and approved Ruckus anyway, intending to keep it through the 06-07 year, despite some qualms about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it. -
Re:Who wants to bet...
It has been done before and the implications are both terrifying and promising:
http://www.rpi.edu/~bulloj/Doom_Patrol/dp100.html
"Just as Logan made the breakthrough, he learned from his wife Marie that their son, only a few years old at the time, was dying of Sakutia, a jungle fever.
Only one animal can survive Sakutia, the green monkey of West Africa. To save his son, Mark Logan subjected Gar to the devolution ray and turned him into a green monkey. After 24 hours had passed and the danger period was over, Gar Logan was restored to human form--but his skin was still green." -
Rest in peace
Stanislaw Lem was easily of my favourite writers, regardless of genre or language. His short stories are nothing short of brilliant (no pun intended) - it's the caliber of writing that subtly changes the way you think of the world.
A couple of links to bibliographies and excerpts:
http://www.lem.pl/cyberiadinfo/english/dziela/dzie la.htm (his official site)
http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/lem/lem.html
Some of my favourite works are The Cyberiad, The Futurological Congress, and of course The Star Diaries. I have a lot of his work left to read...
May he rest in peace. Douglas Adams had nothing on Stanislaw Lem. -
Not new
Maybe this is a first for public colleges, but I know Rensselaer has been requiring laptops for years. Probably others too.
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Preferred Laptops - so what?
Guess which laptop is the preferred one..
They've used Thinkpads at RPI for some time and they are great machines. The school, however, does not require you to keep the default OS/software package. You simply find yourself in trouble when your assignment requires MatLab and you don't have it installed anymore - though generally you can just borrow a friend's.
There is nothing wrong with suggesting a laptop with a good support track record, lots of academic/scientific software available, and and wide user base. As long as they don't punish people for reconfiguring their machines (which I highly doubt they will.) -
RPI has a Laptop System
I go to http://rpi.edu/ and we require students to have a computer. We have a deal with IBM and all students get a deal and are encouraged to purchase the same laptop through the school. This means all the hardware is the same, and it is all undder the same warranty. We have a repair shop here at school, that is authorized to do most repairs on warranty. We also ship them with a standard software package of educational liscences. As far as some software(Solidworks CAD) there is a license server so taht to use it you must have a network connection and be on campus(or VPN in). Thsi works very well, and the theft rate is not too high. They all come with security cables, and if you don't use them they do get stolen, but it doesnt happen TOO often.
I also worked for the Humanities and Social Sciences Department here, as a Systems Administrator and we dealt with giving faculty software on their laptops(the school's doesnt come with adobe). We use sassafrass to key out adobe cs, macromedia and other arts type applications. just about anything can be keyed, mac and pc alike. -
If you have a non-Intel Mac...There's a Classic Simulation Mac users can play with to their heart's dismay.
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Re:You might be dense if...
Oh yeah and this link: http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1358&s
e tappvar=page(1) has more info on the team of Rensselaer scientists. -
Re:Cool
According to this article http://www.rpi.edu/~danony/Research/Pyro.htm the 200,000eV was when configured to produce X-rays. The neutron generator yielded neutrons at 2.5MeV. Still a tiny amount of energy of course...
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Picture of the Device
Same text info as the refernced blog. Only difference being that this URL also contains a photo of the device.
http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=1358&se tappvar=page(1) -
Pyroelectric particle accelerator
Indeed, it's different from all of those, read TFA. Here's a basic explanation of the device from RPI.
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Get the paper here
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Re:One thing screams "HOAX!"From their Oct 2005 paper
...It is significant that 2.45 MeV D/D fusion neutrons were measured only when chilled, well-degassed, cavitated D-acetone was used. That is, no neutrons were measured when room temperature D-acetone, or as expected, normal acetone, was used.
So the obvious and cheap control was done after all. -
Re:Cold Fusion
Am I the only one who found that clicking the link didn't work? The paper is the top link on this page:http://www.rpi.edu/~laheyr/laheypub.html
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Re:Cold Fusion
Unjustly dismissive. First off, even initially, Taleyarkhan rallied about as much support as he did opposition. Now, even much of his initial opposition considers his work valid. Sonofusion seems to be quite a real phenominon (albeit, currently six orders of magnitude from breakeven).
Here's a very interesting paper by him in Oct. 2005, in which they discuss many of the recent developments, including the potential for nonlinear scaling of efficiency and even the possibility of criticality. It's a very interesting read. -
Re:PVR is a distraction
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Re:PVR is a distraction